Without a Kick Scott Runs 10th

Steve Scott looked up near the two-mile mark of the Carlsbad 5,000 on Sunday and watched the race he designed pass him by.

Up to that point he appeared as confident as he had sounded in his prerace remarks when he flat out said he would win the race, just as he had done in 1986, ’87 and ’88.

There he was, all the way through the thing right behind eventual winner Doug Padilla. Siamese twins don’t run this close together.

Scott stayed on Padilla’s left shoulder until that two-mile mark. He appeared poised to kick.

“I think I may have looked like I was relaxed,” he said. “But actually I was struggling a bit, trying to maintain my form, trying to maintain my posture.”

When it came time to kick, Scott, 33, actually fell back, eventually finishing 10th at 13:51. A disappointment, to be sure, but a mere scratch on his ego compared to the gash inflicted by Padilla.

Padilla, 33, finished at 13:29.5, slicing a full second off Scott’s American best.

Still, friends came up afterward to shake Scott’s hand.

“Good race,” they told him. “Congratulations.”

Friends do that sort of thing--sportswriters do not. Yet, when Scott, who lives in Leucadia, took the microphone at the post-race press conference, the usually restrained media broke into applause.

But for what? Scott had to ask himself.

“It’s nice to be appreciated,” he said later. “But it didn’t help any. You can’t be a competitor and not be hurt when you don’t do what you are capable of. I’m extremely disappointed with how I finished today. With the way the race was run, I should have been up there at the end.”

Unlike last year’s race, which had an approximate split of 4:10 after one mile, this one had a split of 4:22. Surely, the pace would not burn Scott’s legs out from under him as it did in 1989 when Yobes Ondieki turned in a world best of 13:26.0.

But for the second consecutive year, Scott was not up there at the end.

“After (the leaders) moved away from me at the two-mile mark, I was still hoping I could close the gap,” Scott said.

While Scott maintained his positive attitude, he failed to convince his legs.

“Once (the leaders) made that final turn and started pulling away from me even more,” Scott said, “I knew it was kind of hopeless.”

All of which came as a shock to the runner who in earlier years set two world bests on the Carlsbad course and who still holds American records in the mile (both indoor and outdoor), the 1,500 and the 2,000 (both indoor).

“I should have had a real nice kick,” he said. “It should have been like a walk in the park for me today. I don’t know if I could have beat Doug Padilla, he ran like a man possessed today, but at least I should have been in the hunt.”